


a softer epilogue

by girlsarewolves



Series: exchanges [9]
Category: Castlevania (Cartoon)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fic Exchange, Fluff and Angst, Grief/Mourning, Multi, OT3, Pre-OT3, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-01 02:29:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20250679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlsarewolves/pseuds/girlsarewolves
Summary: Alucard wasn’t a messiah or a monster. He was a young man, now an orphan, with nothing left but the pain and the empty spaces where his parents had once been.Maybe Sypha and Trevor were a different kind of presence in his life, but they were still people that cared. People that could love him, that he could love. So they stayed, promising Alucard he wasn’t keeping them from their mission - and insisting he’d be joining them when they finally did leave.





	a softer epilogue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dudewheresmytea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dudewheresmytea/gifts).

> I am so sorry for going for the super obvious, cliche title.

* * *

This was a position Sypha did not see herself ever being in. Not that she minded, not in the slightest. She felt a warm, pleasant sense of privilege and pride to be there - the big spoon to Trevor and Alucard.

  
  


Surprisingly, it had been Trevor who decided they should stay a little while longer, who didn’t feel right leaving Alucard behind. But then Trevor had - perhaps not so surprisingly - seen Alucard in a much more...human light.

  
  


It wasn’t that Sypha thought of Alucard strictly as a vampire or dhampir or monster. Nor did she see him solely as a savior any longer. But she did still see him as someone so much larger than life, more distant and more capable. She thought she saw through his cool and aloof demeanor, his dedication to his duty, his new purpose in the wake of his mother’s death and Dracula’s war on humanity, but it seemed not as well as she had thought.

  
  


It was Trevor who saw how much Alucard was hurting, was breaking down now that his sense of purpose was gone, now that Dracula was dead. The grief and sorrow that had been bottled away after the death of his mother no longer had anything to keep it locked up - and now it had a new grief to join, for his father, for the person that Alucard had known growing up and the monster who had nearly killed Alucard twice that he had been forced to slay. It was Trevor who saw how despondent Alucard was, who understood how much worse it could get with no one and nothing to be there for him.

  
  


Alucard wasn’t a messiah or a monster. He was a young man, now an orphan, with nothing left but the pain and the empty spaces where his parents had once been.

  
  


Maybe Sypha and Trevor were a different kind of presence in his life, but they were still people that cared. People that could love him, that he could love. So they stayed, promising Alucard he wasn’t keeping them from their mission - and insisting he’d be joining them when they finally did leave.

  
  


He’d put on a front of mild annoyance, one that failed to hide the faint smile tugging at his lips. He’d led them to rooms that he’d spent much of his childhood in, explaining his family split their time between Dracula’s castle and Lisa’s cottage. He had given them details of his early years, happier times. Sometimes he would pause, staring as if lost in memories, seeing ghosts of the past. Sometimes he would trail off as his voice became tight with too much emotion, not resuming his tale until the threat of a breakdown had passed.

  
  


“You know...it’s okay. If you need to cry. We won’t judge you. I mean, I might. A little. If you don’t and keep up this ‘I’m better than you and have no emotions’ act,” Trevor said after the first few times. 

  
  


Sypha had smacked his shoulder, about to tell him to stop being rude, but Alucard was laughing then, a bitter and hollow sound, one that turned slowly into sobs. She watched his shoulders shake, smacking Trevor again and glaring.

  
  


“What? He needs to.”

  
  


“You could have more tact, you know.”

  
  


“He’s antagonizing me, it’s the only way he knows how to help it seems,” Alucard whispered in a choked voice, one hand on the wall as if holding himself up under the weight of all his grief. He gave them a half smile through his tears. “Perhaps he has a point. I’ve tried so hard to bury it all down so deep I won’t feel it, but it’s still there.” He slumped then, into the wall, caving in on himself. “They’re gone. In less than two years, my family was destroyed. I couldn’t…”

  
  


Sypha and Trevor moved over to him, supporting him. Sypha touched Alucard’s chest, hand over his heart, while Trevor quietly told him, “Don’t. Don’t go there. You didn’t kill your mother, and you didn’t drive your father mad. It’s not your fault. Any of it.”

  
  


Sypha suspected that was something Trevor had needed someone to tell him when he was a child. That the failure to save his family he felt wasn’t fair to himself, that what had happened was the fault of the perpetrators, not the victims. Perhaps this would give Trevor some long-needed resolution, helping Alucard conquer his demons.

  
  


“Trevor is right. You do not bear the guilt of the crimes a corrupt church and your father committed. Being unable to save your mother or your father were not sins or a failure or a sign of weakness.” Sypha lifted her hand from Alucard’s chest to his cheek, wiping away at the very human tears that were falling. “But you do have the right to grieve. And there is no shame in that. Trevor and I are here for you.”

  
  


“Yeah, what she said.”

Alucard held onto them, smiling even as he continued to weep. “Thank you. Truly. Even you, Belmont.”

  
  


He had given them directions after that, to a bedroom, and they had supported him to the room. At first they had planned to give him some privacy, but both she and Trevor hovered at the door, uncertain if privacy was what Alucard needed in that moment, or if companionship would be better. It was Alucard who made the choice clear.

  
  


“Please. Stay.”

  
  


And so there they were, nestled in bed together, Alucard sandwiched between Sypha and Trevor. They had held him while he broke down in sobs, a hand clutching onto each of them, as if to reassure himself they were real and they were there, perhaps needing an anchor to the present and the potential future, not the past and all its ghosts. They held him until he finally drifted off, to exhausted to fight away sleep any longer.

  
  


At some point, Trevor had fallen asleep, too. He was sprawled out on his back, but with one arm hooked under Alucard, and his head turned towards him, the dhampir’s head resting underneath Trevor’s chin. It was a curious sight, how close Alucard’s mouth was to Trevor’s throat and chest, and how at ease Trevor had been even before passing out, aware of the oddness of their position.

  
  


Sypha was proud of him, not making any teasing remarks about how dangerous that was. It was good that he was learning sometimes his sense of humor wasn’t appropriate.

  
  


Now she was the only one left awake, watching the others and wondering over their current situation. Not just sharing a bed, not just sticking together even after defeating - destroying - Dracula, but the bond they had formed. It was like a thread that ran through each of them, tying them together. She had never experienced anything quite like it, and truth be told, she wasn’t quite sure what to make of it.

  
  


But she hoped, maybe, that there would be more nights like there, as the big spoon to these two idiots she was starting to think she’d fallen in love with.

* * *


End file.
